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Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
The first several days after the kickoff are when most crucial robot design directions and game strategy are determined.
What are some of the painful pitfalls your team has fallen into when brainstorming the game/robot that you know to avoid now that you're older and wiser? What will you do to avoid these pitfalls in the future? Here a big one we’ve suffered from multiple times and what we’ll do to avoid a repeat: Falling back on a familiar and comfortable robot design from the past and adapting it to the new game. We did this in 2009 when we basically cloned our 2006 robot. We never let ourselves get beyond the idea that we needed to shoot the balls one at a time instead of considering the possibility of handling them in bulk and dumping them. We also did this in 2005 when we could actually play the 2005 game with our 2004 robot with almost no changes. In both examples we could have done much better if we had forced ourselves to conceptualize new ideas, role-play the game, and develop alternatives before making the final decision on our direction. Instead we got tunnel vision. It's good to learn from experience. It's better to learn from somebody else's experience. |
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It completely stuns me when I see a team show up at an event with a misdesgined robot that is not prepared to compete in this game due to lack of understanding of how to properly pay the game that could have easily been solved by simply taking a day or so to understand how to play the game instead of rushing in with a vague idea of what to do due to the animation. |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
One issue we've had is jumping into design before strategy is decided. There's usually several ways to implement a strategy, so limiting yourself to a single design generally isn't the way to go. Less hurtful, but often similarly wasteful, is designing for a strategy that will he decided against. Why design if you'll leave need any designs for such a strategy at all? The only answer is practice, which, while not bad, is inefficient during a build season and during that crucial period right after kickoff.
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The Cybersonics team has had many pitfalls, but here are some of the most significant ones:
The biggest thing we have looked over in the past 3 or so years is the importance of picking up the game pieces efficiently, fast, and for sure. We always go right to how we are going to score and overlook the importance of picking up the game pieces. But the one thing I feel our team has done extremely well (an aspect in which I feel many teams have huge pitfalls) is our drive train. We have used just about the same drive train for the past 3 years (including Lunacy), and it has served us extremely well! I see so many teams changing their DT's when in past years, they have worked great! Another key idea: Simplicity is key, or as it is more well known, "KISS." When you make something simple and effective, it makes your life infinitely times easier! Just my $.02 |
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With that in mind, that is one reason for having such ambitious goals this year: Not to be ordinary. "Innovate not imitate" is one phrase that really stuck with me from the whole FIRST experience; I am taking that to heart. I guess my advice is not to be satisfied with competence but to aim for the stars; go above and beyond of what is expected. |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
573 has had two main pitfalls:
1. We usually end up designing a complex robot, and with our resources, the final product usually doesn't work how we intended it to. In addition to FIRST, we compete in OCCRA, and the past two OCCRA seasons and this past FIRST season, we have built extremely simple robots. Our last three robots have had a minimum of moving parts, yet were extremely offensive. Our Breakaway robot was simple, yet innovative. The kicker was basically a rotating paddle, and it worked extremely well. Throughout the season, we had plenty of teams compliment us on our simple, effective design and a few even asked if they could use our design(especially after Ann Arbor). 2. We also tend to have a habit of falling behind schedule and cramming to complete our robot even when it is a simple design. To prevent falling behind, we just need to make sure that everybody stays on task and completes the 15 minute jobs in 15 minutes instead of an hour and a half. tl;dr version: Basically, 573 needs to keep the design simple and stay on task and we will have another outstanding season. |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
Don't try too many new things at once.
Last year we were trying out a new material (PVC), as well as trying out a 4 wheel coaxial swerve, CAN, and window motors. Lets just say that we had too many unknown variables, and the system failed... miserably. If we had done some preseason testing we would have been able to see that the PVC bends under the pressures of the bevel gears. Experimenting during build season is beneficial, but only do a few things at a time. Good news is that we were able to build a completely new bot for 10,000 lakes, where we placed 7th out of 63 after seeding. (That was an awesome spring break, 5 day build) |
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Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
"You can't do that" syndrome or "no way that will work."
On more than a few occasions I have heard a rookie or newer team member come up with a good idea only to be shot down by more experienced members with the above phrases. Then that very idea shows up on another robot at competition (and works great.) Don't fall into that trap. All ideas can have merit and many good ones come from unexpected places. |
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Innovation because the game strategy calls for innovation is an extremely good reason to innovate. Let's take 1625 this year. 6WD swerve. Probably the #1 most complex drive to attempt, but their strategy called for the capabilities that it could provide, and they did very well. Same for 1501's triangular robot. OTOH, see 1114 in 2008, 330 in 2005 and 2008, 148 almost any year, and quite a few rookies (the highest rookie seeds, typically), as well as some of 1625's other robots. They build simple robots that are engineered to perform well. Innovation (or, in 1625's case, WINnovation) on these robots assists a simple design. It does not replace it. |
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Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
If there is ever one thing I regret in designing, it is that often times the freshmen and sophomores get ignored! New or not, they have ideas too!
Some times [and more often than not, I've noticed], older, more experienced people over complicate things. I showed breakaway and a few other games to my Lego League teams, [I have three], and each one had totally different ideas, but all were valid and all had been used at some competition I had been to! The designs [although not all too neatly drawn] were simple and effective. Sometimes fresh minds on a project are a good thing! You never know what you might have overlooked.::safety:: ~Abby~ |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
"Falling into the Pit" comes as a result of not building a robot that solves the problem which is "the game." The first step is to identify the problem your team is going to solve with the robot (there is more than one.) If you don't solve the correct problem then no matter how well you build your robot you will not perform well. Even once you have identified the correct problem and have began to build your robot you must be vigilant that you stay on track. It is easy to sort of wander off course trying to "force" a design to work. This eats up your build season and will result in a lower caliber robot. Because of this, it is important to take a step back every week or so and make sure you're still working your way towards solving your origional problem and not overcomplitating your robot with new problems added along the way. I would say a good rule of thumb is if what your working on doesn't seem like an ellegant or simple design then probably isn't and you need to rethink what you are doing. (I think you'll find that simple ideas generally become more complex once you actually start design/build while complex ideas generally become, well... messy.)
Its also important to consider that often robots that seem very complicated to your team are in fact not to the team that build it. Don't "fall into the pit" of building something that is too complex to finish in one build season. (On my team we have a saying. "Take how long you think it (a part) will take, then double it, then double it again, then you're aproximatly around how long it'll take.") Complex features come as a result of practice and past experience. Those teams don't just decide to build their complicated drivetrain / arm / shooter / ect out of the blue. They have built them before, know how to build them, know what not to do, and have a list of what to do better for next time. As they gain experience their complex feature no longer becomes a big deal because they've got it down to a science. That is the beauty of off-season prototyping. Just some food for thought. |
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Brainstorming cannot be accomplished in one day or even in two. It takes us most of the first week to analyze the game, play the game in our heads and on a mock field to see what is the best strategy. You have to analyze the scoring and what you need to do to win against other robots and what their strategies might be. You have to consider offense and defense and weigh ideas that might come at a price in terms of risky operation. You have to decide what your robot can accomplish it it finds itself as the only alliance partner (due to missing or malfunctioning robots).
Above all, you must get a handle on time. Two minutes can be the blink of an eye when you are trying to maneuver to score the bonus or it can be an eternity when your opponent is scoring like mad and you can't do anything to stop them. |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
Something that 330 does that we've adapted (read: stolen) is we play the game the first week. We get the field elements set up, and act as if we're robots with different functionalities and strategies. It really helps us visualize the game play and, as Al said, just how quick 2:00 is.
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Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
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In the past, our major problem with brainstorming was that we just didn't spend enough time on it. Often we'd skip right over considering the game and strategy straight to robot design, and even then not really plan what we were trying to achieve. (Note: always set and document quantifiable/testable requirements. Always. And then work to them. ;)) We're working on it and are going to hold a practice kickoff soon with a different game to practice what we've learned.
Most important lesson: slow down. Brainstorming and requirement setting is a very important process. Give it the time it deserves. Attached is the picture I use to convey this to my design teams in college. :) (borrowed with permission: Penn State Systems Engineering) Quote:
If it works better for your team, consider using the Einstein verbiage, "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler". Or even Saint-Exupéry's, "perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
Here is a really great link on strategic design and implementation.
http://www.simbotics.org/files/first...Strategies.pdf I was fortunate enough to get to see Karthik present this material at the Championship. READ IT. ::rtm:: Have your team review it, in a meeting. Take time to understand his Golden Rules. They are the pitfalls of most unsuccessful robots. I can't stress how great it is that a Championship caliber team like 1114 is willing to share information like this. For many teams, the most important thing to remember is the difference between staying comfortable, stretching, and over-reaching. Staying in your comfort zone will often limit your potential. Over-reaching will often end falling flat on your face. Stretching is the balance. Just like with sports, the more often you stretch, typically the farther you can stretch, and the better you will know your limits. |
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There are a few of things that I feel my team seems to fall for almost every year.
1. The Importance of a drive train. Each year we try and focus so much on the manipulator, that the drivetrain is neglected and throw together. Ultimately this hinders overall design and performance. 2. It might not be a bad things in some cases, but the team becomes overzealous. It seems that we jump into development of prototypes a bit too early, and when those prototypes go south, we wonder why we didn't see very basic issues. 3. Not making a second robot. For the past couple of years, my team has not made a second robot, or one to practice with after ship date. This isn't because of want, but primarily because we have 2 designs we take all the way to the end, and we can't devote enough resources to developing two full, distinct robots and also creating a copy of one. 4. This one is key, but some people seem to under estimate what other teams will do. While brainstorming, some mentors/students immediately take the mindset that if we are able to score about 5-6 goals, then that's good cause barely anyone will get those. Had we stuck with this mindset, not only would it have sorely effected our design, but we would've had a rude awakening once we got to worlds where they were scoring 10+ goals almost every match! - Sunny |
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Also there is a point where you have to start cutting chips so you can get something together for testing. Even if it doesn't work the way you intended you will learn from the failure and be able to move on to something that works better. Shameless copying of mechanisms that did something well in the past that you need to accomplish tasks for this years game is encouraged. Why reinvent something when you have a solution that works well. I can point out 2-3 mechanism variations that we use almost every year on my team because they are ready solutions in our arsenal that we know will be reliable. Finally reliability is king. Never underestimate the value of not breaking in the middle of a match/elimination tourney/regional. It takes 20-25 matches to win the championship 10-15 of which are in the elimination tournament alone. Assume you have to do this with minimal maintainence to be competitive, because you can't play if you don't get out to the field everytime. |
Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
Some people think the secret to a great robot is a full team of engineers and a small mountain of corporate money, it isn't.
The secret is prototyping. Whatever you're going to do, you need to play around with it, test it, tweak it, and learn if you're idea is a good one LONG before you try to execute it. Follow a design process, for success. The most successful teams in FIRST all rock the prototypes... |
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So an hour became a day, a day became a week, a week became a month, and a month became a year. |
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Innovating for the sake of innovating, reinventing the wheel is probably the second biggest pitfall you can fall into when designing an FRC robot, if the wheel is already a very optimized, good solution. During the initial brainstorming, say anything you think of. Don't limit yourself at the VERY beginning, but be practical. Make sure it is something you can do. --- By far the biggest pitfall I've seen is doing more than a team is capable of. It takes far less than you think to be competitive in an FRC game, especially considering the alliance structure, but you have to do that task well. It doesn't even matter if it's the RIGHT task; if you do it well you'll be successful. If your team was a turreted shooter in 2009, or your team tried to hang before you finished your ball possession, you probably know what I'm talking about. For 2791 this year, we're going to figure out the best successful strategy that involved our robot doing as little as possible, and we're going to perfect that. There is always a way to score a number of points relatively easily that is simpler than perhaps the most obvious method. In 2009, anyone who dumped beat 75% of shooters. In 2010, shockingly few teams were adept at scoring from the front zone, which was literally just pushing a soccer ball up a ramp. Sure it's "easy", but what if your robot was like 910, 971, 359, or many of the other great front robots this year? They took the "easy" objective and dominated it. -------- The other big catch I see is not focusing on the right parts of the game. How many people designed their robots to "kick and hang" this year? When you really look at the problem, you learn that before you can kick, you need ball control. In order to score a lot of points, you'll probably need to change zones. When you identify the problem, make sure you identify the WHOLE problem. |
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Here are some of the pitfalls we experienced (in no particular order):
1) We took pride in our ability to figure out the game and come up with the basic layout of the robot really fast - like Saturday afternoon - so we would have plenty of time to prototype and build the ill-conceived fruit of our haste. Faster isn't always better. 2) We built parts and subassemblies (gearboxes, etc.) when we could have used kit parts or bought suitable COTS parts. Its tough to admit that our home-grown ideas aren't always the best way to go. 3) We built the "low cost team field elements" and didn't consider how they differed from the "real" ones. For example, in 2010 we only looked at the steel crossbar on the tower when thinking about our lift concept. The wooden 4x4 support posts didn't inspire any thoughts about a curling lifter. 4) During brainstorming, we restricted our technical approach to concepts that were "possible". "Possible" was defined as something we already knew how to do. This is where the rookies really help. Reality hasn't beaten the creativity out of them yet :D. 5) We tried to be too sophisticated, and built machines with too many potential weak links. They were pretty useless unless everything was working perfectly - which was rare. KISS! 6) Our robots were hard to drive and operate. They made unrealistic demands on operator skills and cooperation in a match situation. KISS again. Hopefully, we learned something from our past mistakes. However, its still hard to tell the difference between "great", "good enough", and "fail" during build season. We can study rules, develop a strategy, list desirable capabilities of the robot, and build prototypes. Like most teams we go through this process in a mild vacuum and we won't know if the machine we decided to build was the right one for the game until we get to the competition. In general, the best robots do the essential tasks quickly, reliably, under difficult circumstances, and are easy to operate. KISS (done properly) is one common thread that ties these all together. Ingenuity is another, but we haven't figured out how to impose that one on ourselves yet. |
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I'd have to quote the whole thread, it contains so much excellent wisdom. Thanks!
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Other years we get the first two parts right, but we settle for good enough without realizing that other teams are building better machines behind closed doors. We don't realize it until after ship. The past two years we have been able to fix our deficiencies by making modifications at events, but other years we aren't able to overcome the poor decisions we made in the first couple weeks. We haven't figured out how to fix the problems yet. Maybe we'll get it right this year. |
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I'd have to say that one of our team's downfalls has been the "Did you see how Team XXX is doing that? They just posted some vid/pics on CD!" syndrome. Lack of confidence in our own ideas and designs and feeling like we have to try what others are successfully doing drives the creative process into a ditch. And while I'm not saying that researching what others are sharing on CD is a bad thing, there's something to be said about executing on your plan with confidence and learning something new.
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If there are loose, spherical objects on the field, the majority of them will come to rest against the edge of the field. Be able to pick them up there! Year after year teams struggle with this, and it never gets any better...
For less experienced teams (or those without good software people) -- do not anticipate, or rely upon complex software solutions. Keep It Simple, Keep It Mechanical. We had great software guys (one of them had wonderful stories about working on the Apollo program), but we never finished the mechanical stuff early enough to give them adequate time to test. Speed. Whatever you do, do it well, and do it fast, so you can do it more times in a match. You (and everyone else) will probably overestimate the average good robot. It has been my experience that typically a robot that can reliably score the starting load is an eliminations worthy robot. I think that's a good starting point. I also think pretty much any team could benefit from building more simple prototypes. I think $300 spent on an extra drill battery (or two), some 1/2" steel shaft, PVC piping, 1/2" plywood, 2x4s and sheetrock screws, a couple of pulleys and small stash of polycord is some of the most effective money a team can spend. |
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Since then, teams haven't been able to pick up in that area very well. 2010 was kind of an anomaly, because you couldn't really slurp the balls in, but 2009 and 2006 had a lot near the edge. |
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Here's a few things our team needs to improve on:
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The bumpers offer a very unique problem when dealing with game objects resting along the walls. -Brando |
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Does that mean the bumpers are annoying or - does that mean that not enough time and thought is given to them? How are they a pitfall to be avoided? Jane |
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This was especially bad in the corner goals as the padding caused another edge to block the ball from going into the goal. Thus teams struggling to push the ball in those last foot. Visually this made the robots look quite clumsy and added an unexpected degreee of difficulty to collecting and the "simple task" of pushing a ball into the goal. The pitfall to avoid here would be testing a prototype or concept without the offset induced by the bumpers. There were a couple ball collecting ideas that were fine in the past (pre-bumper), that would have significant difficulty with the "wall manuever" if they were moved out 3 inches... |
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Thank you, Ike. You just provided a post that can be referenced for information regarding the bumpers and the pitfalls. Cool.
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Not particularly sure how this applies to a pincher, if at all, but it was certainly a game feature that could be accounted for and fixed in design. It was probably my favorite robot feature this year for my team. |
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Another thing that is not really mentioned here:
Robot orientation. Every year, 103 creates a, "Long," robot, or one in which the front of the robot is the shorter side. For some games that requires a lot of game pieces to pick up, this is definitely not ideal. If you look at every robot on Einstein in 2009, you will notice that they are, "Wide." They were the robot that was able to pick up the most balls the fastest, because if you cannot pick up game pieces fast, you cannot possibly score fast. I hope that for a post season project next year that we can create our first wide bot. |
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One thing that my team seems to always forget is to make the game object interface as wide as the front of the robot. In 2009, our ball collector was very narrow, and thus only able to accommodate a single ball at a time. To pick up a ball, we had to very carefully move the robot so that the ball was directly in front of the collector before moving to pick it up, no easy feat in a game as rough as Lunacy!
In 2010, we designed our ball handler to hold the ball at a specific point in front of the kicker with two parallel wheels, which would theoretically allow for more accurate kicks. In reality, it simply made acquiring balls in the game environment nearly impossible. During the off-season, we upgraded the ball handler and kicker to be much wider, with astronomically better results. Of course, this applies mostly to small, ball-shaped objects. Traffic cones, on the other hand, are a far different story... |
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Ike handled your last question exactly as I would have, so I will leave it at that. Bumpers are somewhat annoying, but its just another part of the game that needs to be accounted for. I think as bumpers have become a staple in FRC, we've seen teams slowly start to give them the proper time they require. When bumpers first appeared, we saw teams that had bumpers falling off left and right, and we saw teams that had bumpers so securely fashioned to their robot that it literally would take an act of god to remove them. Obviously both extremes had huge disadvantages (penalties for bumpers falling off if they were too loose, or hours spent removin/reattaching bumpers to weigh the robot for inspection if they were not easily removable). As time has progressed, we now see nice and elegant bumper designs popping up everywhere. Most teams now design bumpers so that they can be added/removed in a matter of minutes. We see bumpers that can change from red/blue or vice versa with a flip of a piece of fabric. It's taken a little while, but teams are falling into a groove now of efficient and elegant bumper design. Like I said bumpers are somewhat annoying, but its just something teams need to address from the beginning as they are designing their robot. For me, it is painfully obvious when a team hasn't put much thought into their bumpers when I get to a competition, and I'm sure it's just as painful for the team to get through the season that way. -Brando |
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We make our "object manipulators" removeable. Within the build season we will typically due several prototypes, and a couple "production" manipulators in the search for bettter collecting/control. Then it will likely get tweaked several times (some years more drastic than others) during the competition season. Assuming you have found the "ideal manipulator" is a big pitfall. Event the really good manipulators that I saw got tweaked throughout the season.
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Re: Pitfalls to avoid when brainstorming the 2011 game and robot
Avoid "Not reading the manual" before you start creating a strategy.
Avoid "Designing a robot" before you have an agreed strategy. Avoid "Not being all together on a strategy" before moving forward with a design. One key, esspecialy for newer teams, is to understand that the game rule book and design requirements are requirements, not suggestions. You must fit inside the space requirements. You must be under the weight requiremets. You can only use the approved motors, epectronics, wire sizes, etc. |
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Wish I was making this up. |
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But the main point that I was making is that it is important to take into consideration the orientation, and how each bot will interact, move, and preform with other robots. Another key thing that many teams did not notice is that a wide wheel base created a much greater rotational force. Because of the greater distance between the pivot point and the wheels, a much greater torque was in effect, making it easier for wide teams to turn. And in that game, the two driving things that killed were speed and agility. Ahh, another sometimes unseen effect of one design over another. I am sure some teams thought of this, but for most (103 included), that effect was not brought up at all. |
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We didn't remember them when the discussion I mentioned took place. Which illustrates the point even better not to fall into the belief that something is the "right" way to do it. |
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